Summary: Life should be us stepping up to challenges

And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: 35 And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.

Shepherds were a lowly and disgusting group to some

Maybe we should begin to think of every setback and test as a gift from God. What you do with that opportunity is your gift to God. Opportunity doesn’t knock. Opportunity roars! Here is the great irony about opportunities. They usually come disguised as insurmountable problems. They look like five-hundred-pound lions that want to eat you for lunch. Or they look like six hundred Philistines charging at you. To the average person, the circumstances presented to david and Benaiah were problems to run away from, not opportunities to be seized. But Benaiah or david didn’t see a five-hundred-pound problem.

Psalm 5:3 reveals the way David started every day: “In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.”

One of our greatest spiritual shortcomings is low expectations. We don’t expect much from God because we aren’t asking for much.

Prayer has a way of God-sizing our expectations. David can’t wait to see what God is going to do next because he is living in prayer mode. The more you pray, the higher your expectations.

Col 4:2 Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; The word watch is a throwback to the Old Testament watchmen whose job it was to sit on the city wall, scan the horizon, and keep watch. They were the first ones to see an attacking army or traveling traders. People who live in prayer mode are watchmen. They see further than others see. They see things before others see them. And they see things other

people don’t see. People who live in prayer mode see opportunities that other people don’t even notice. People who don’t live in prayer mode are opportunity blind. There are only two ways to live your life: survival mode or prayer mode. Survival mode is simply reacting to the circumstances around you. It is a pinball existence. And to be perfectly honest, it’s predictable, monotonous, and boring. Prayer mode is the exact opposite. Your spiritual antenna is up and your radar is on.

If Benaiah had been in survival mode, he would have reacted to the situation by running away from the lion. But living in prayer mode made him proactive. He knew that God was ordering his footsteps even when they crossed paths with paw prints. He knew that the lion was lunch. Living in prayer mode is the difference between seeing coincidences and providences. Prayer has a way of helping us recognize that what we might dismiss as human accidents are really divine appointments.